


Quiet

by shara



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4474166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shara/pseuds/shara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>House’s leg hurts. Wilson cooks? Umm it’s better than the summary makes it sound (I hope)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet

Wilson was in the kitchen when House limped into the apartment. He shouldered his bag and coat off gingerly, leaning heavily on his left leg, feeling the muscles in his right leg ache with the cold. Wilson glanced at him briefly in acknowledgement before turning back to the stove. He was cooking something on the wok, stir fry, thought House, smelling cooking oil in the air. There was the telltale hissing of oil as Wilson moved the vegetables around with his ladle.

“If you wanted Chinese,” said House, glancing at the myriad of take-out menus papering the fridge, and moving to the bathroom, “could’ve just ordered. I hear they deliver now and everything.”

“This is healthier,” Wilson replied.

House finished up and moved to the sink, turned on the tap full blast and ran hot water over his fingers. They tingled as feeling came back, sharp little pangs poking at his skin as his nerves complained about the temperature change. He looked up at the mirror and took inventory of the whites of his eyes, the bags under them, skin gathered into furrows on his forehead, the tip of his nose still slightly red from outside, and felt even more tired, age and cold weighing down his bones. He turned away and switched off the tap and the light.

Wilson had finished cooking by the time House reentered the kitchen. He eased himself onto one of the stools around the low table in the kitchen. Wilson had insisted on buying the stools after getting tired of eating on House’s couch for three months, and for once, House didn’t grudge this idea of change. Eating here was a different experience; the light here was soft and yellow and warm, and House could feel himself relax under it. Things weren’t quite so sharp here, not the way they were in the angular light of the hospital, where science and sterility and Wilson’s lab coat cut angles in House’s sight.

House’s eyes followed Wilson around the kitchen as he opened and shut drawers, picked up utensils, turned off the dials and switches on the stove, and ran the wok under the water in the sink. Wilson was in his work clothes, but tieless, with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. House distracted himself from the ache in his leg by watching the play of water droplets on all that bare skin, water kissing the sides of Wilson’s fingers as he held the wok under the tap. House imagined it was icy cold, closed his eyes and thought of drowning in it, anything to soothe the fire in his leg.

House blinked open his eyes as Wilson set the plates down on the table, the discordant clinking of cutlery on porcelain bringing him back.

“Long day?” Wilson asked, teasing gently as he sat himself down on a stool.

House rolled his eyes at that and didn’t reply. Wilson knew he didn’t have any cases at the moment, just endless clinic hours during the times he couldn’t hide from Cuddy. No doubt Wilson would blame his leg pain on this inactivity—he could enact the ensuing argument in his head, complete with trademark Wilson-expressions and hand gestures. But House didn’t feel up to an argument tonight and maybe Wilson sensed that because he didn’t prod House into answering.

They sat in comfortable silence punctuated by the quiet clinking of their forks. House watched Wilson under the guise of eating, moving his fork around the fried vegetables. Wilson ate with his left hand, of course, and though House had seen it a thousand times (watched Wilson sign his name, brush his teeth, reach for coffee cups with his left hand), it still startled House sometimes, that in this, they were not the same. House found it endearing, in an odd sort of way. He wanted to take the fingers of Wilson’s left hand into his own, absorb whatever power they had, as though they held a secret House didn’t have access to with his own ordinary right.

Wilson turned and caught him staring. “What?” he asked, eyebrows quirking upward.

And House was looking at Wilson’s hairline now, at the soft, soft brown hair that was lightening into gray at the temples, and when had that happened? Wilson was growing old at the edges, soft and frayed, and why hadn’t House noticed? He reached out a hand now as Wilson put down his fork, and touched the little spot of gray with his fingers.

Wilson jumped a little at House’s touch, looking at him slightly oddly now. “House? What is it?”

House didn’t know what it was, and it wasn’t anything really. But Wilson was getting old, and a little gray, and he had cooked him stir fry because it was healthier, and maybe House was more tired than he’d realized because he drew his fingers down Wilson’s face, curled them around the nape of his neck, thumb still at the soft gray at his temples, and leaned in for a gentle kiss.

He tasted cooking oil and soy sauce before he pulled back slightly, enough to break the kiss, and leaned his forehead against Wilson’s for a moment, eyes closed, and breathed a tired sigh against his skin. He wanted to preserve this, this stillness and quiet, that numbed the screaming in his leg, slowed the aimless whirling of thoughts in his head when he didn’t have a case.

“House?” Wilson asked, quiet now. They were so close House could feel the words more than hear them. “Are you ok?”

House brushed his lips against the corner of Wilson’s mouth before pulling back, and murmured, “Yeah.”

He went back to his stir fry and dared Wilson to say something about unexpected displays of affection by the way he didn’t meet Wilson’s eyes. Wilson didn’t take the dare and went back to his dinner too. But when House chanced a glance at him next and saw the half smile quirking one corner of his lips, he made a mental note to himself to be extra horrible to him tomorrow, just to make sure Wilson didn’t get the wrong idea and think he was going soft or something.

But later, in bed, when Wilson curled his arm around him and twined the fingers of his left hand with House’s right, and breathed into House’s neck, House didn’t push him away.

Yeah, he thought to himself. He was ok.

 


End file.
